ASHLEY KALAGIAN BLUNT Dark Mode. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
This fierce, unflinching thriller asks timely questions about threatening behaviour. Why don’t we recognise it? Stop it?
Dark Mode is a novel, as the note at the beginning makes clear:
While the characters and their precise circumstances are fictitious, the crimes described in this book are drawn from real events. The attitudes that drive these crimes are also real. And they’re everywhere.
Author Ashley Kalagian Blunt is a close follower of true crime as well as a student of suspense fiction, and she’s elegantly developed those true stories into a fictional tale that is suspenseful, engaging, and terrifying.
For years, Reagan Carsen has kept her life off line. No socials, no photos, no profile. She’s even spent time living overseas, all to avoid a man who stalked and terrified her when she was a teenager. The story of that man and his appalling behaviour is revealed as the book unfolds. Suffice to say he was dangerous, and his position kept him protected. That and the fact it wasn’t so many years ago that women reporting threats were rarely believed, and it was even even rarer for action to be taken to protect them. In this case there were plenty of people who knew what was going on, but only a few were prepared to do anything.
Elbows on her knees, Reagan dropped her face into the heels of her hands. She’d never escape that date. Before 3 July, she’d been an average teenager, with a single mum and second-hand clothes, but on the whole, carefree, getting decent grades, taking swimming lessons, chatting up boys online. After that day, the world darkened.
Meanwhile, Carsen’s deep sense of self-protection is confronted when, out on a morning jog, she stumbles upon the site of a brutal murder. The victim has been dismembered, the parts of her body arranged for maximum shock value. For Carsen, the shock is worse: the victim is the spitting image of her, and that’s hard to process. The scene also echoes the 1947 Black Dahlia murder in the USA, which confuses and conflates media interest. It all risks her privacy and low profile.
Now the dead woman’s face stayed with her. Pale and oval-shaped with a broad forehead, defined lips, thin straight eyebrows, a cherubic nose. And those loose, wild black curls.
She could have been Reagan’s twin.
Her initial reaction is to flee the scene, only to realise she has been caught on the helmet camera of a passing bike rider. Is this the footage that will finally collapse the careful protective web she’s woven? And will not reporting the discovery to the police be the ammunition they need to suspect her potential involvement? In the initial stages of the police investigation it seems that nobody knows or has seen the footage, but Carsen is always on edge because of it.
The stalking has left her with extreme reluctance to let anyone get close, so her life mostly revolves around her nursery business, Voodoo Lily, and the exotic plants she specialises in. Her circle is down to best friend Min-lee, Min-lee’s husband Owen, their children, and Min’s mother. They are close – Min and she spent time together overseas – and Min’s family is Carsen’s family. Contact with her own mother and stepfather is fraught. Her mother blames her for the stalking and the fallout from it, though never explains quite how a young girl can be held responsible for the deranged actions of an adult man. Her mother’s default setting is always to blame the victim:
‘Whatever happened, that girl would probably still be alive if she’d been more cautious. Just like when you caused all that …’ Cynthia paused as if seeking out the right euphemism, ‘trouble.’
Blunt has taken a number of interesting decisions in her characterisation. Carsen’s single mother, with past health problems, is an awful person, and her now partner, Terry, is a cold fish. Fortunately for Carsen, Min-lee is compassionate, clever, and independent – and a bit pushy. A mother with a career of her own, she balances her life with the help of her mother and her husband. Owen is more of a shadow, but nonetheless an active father, and Min and he are supportive of each other’s careers. Min’s work with a true crime podcast gives her contacts within the police force and plenty of ways of getting hold of background information, but her enthusiasm for the subject is challenging for Carsen, who is skittish and obviously damaged. The two friends are an interesting contrast with their different backgrounds, and Blunt explores the impact of childhood experiences on adult behaviour.
A potential new love interest on the horizon for Carsen also makes sense – she’s lonely, a bit lost and struggling – and this interest comes with marketing nous and online savvy. But all is not as it seems, which leaves you with one of those questions: Why didn’t she know?
Then a video of somebody who looks like Carsen having sex is sent to all her business and family contacts, her bank accounts are frozen, and the police raid her apartment after multiple reports of gunshots. The possibility of connections between Carson and the growing count of dead lookalike young women becomes more concerning and the police questions become more pointed. But there’s also a string of threatening emails and odd things happening in plain sight for everyone to see – including the police strike force. Somebody should have said something. Somebody should have put a stop to it.
It’s not until Carsen herself chases down evidence, and Min’s contacts reveal the full awful extent of things, that the activities of a bunch of sick men on the dark web is uncovered. With that, everyone thinks the whole thing is solved. Only it’s not, and somebody really should have seen that risk.
There is much to be said for the objections to crime fiction’s frequent trope of the female victim, who often disappears as the focus turns to the hunt for the perpetrator (overwhelmingly male). You hear the ‘voice’ of the killer a lot more than you hear the ‘voice’ of the victim, with the result that the victim’s experience can easily be undervalued, if it is explored at all.
Dark Mode steps away from this orthodoxy. One victim is present throughout and her voice is heard. The consequences of the depraved perpetrators’ actions are illustrated by the impact they have on this woman, somebody who is utterly blameless. At both times in her life she was targeted because of who she was – vulnerable because of her age, situation, or lack of support. These perpetrators can sniff out the circumstances of potential targets and – unforgivably – believe their desires have primacy over anybody else’s rights.
Dark Mode is about the attitudes and actions of men labelled ‘incels’. To say their behaviour is down to misogyny doesn’t quite cut it; to consider them just a bit pathetic would be dangerous. There are groups of these like-minded individuals out there, on the dark web and in plain sight, able to find each other, share their sick opinions and egg each other on. Men like this are a risk to everyone, but especially to the women they target, manipulate and seek to control. Everybody knows this, but as a community we’ve been too slow to act.
On a deeper level, this is a novel that explores the question so often asked about those nearest and dearest to a killer or a violent manipulator: how did they not know? These offenders have families and communities. They live beside us, yet we don’t seem to be able to recognise their behaviour before they cause so much pain for others.
Do we not see them? Or do we choose not to see them? Or have we all been gaslighted for so many years by never-ending numbers of abusers and bullies (many in positions of authority) that we are all now coercively controlled?
This is the most important question Dark Mode raises, and it leaves a lot to think about. Which is exactly what good crime fiction does when it sets out to expose social failings. We must find a way to name what we see happening around us, be able to call it out, and then, most importantly, have the backing of those who make and enforce laws to do something about it – the threats as well as the inevitable actions they lead to.
Ashley Kalagian Blunt Dark Mode Ultimo Press 2023 PB 400pp $34.99
Karen Chisholm blogs from austcrimefiction.org, where she posts book reviews as well as author biographies.
You can buy Dark Mode from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW or you can buy it from Booktopia.
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